I may have one... the first time through Reese wouldn't have been in love with Sarah Connor already from all those years of looking at her photo... so how does he end up knocking her up? I guess you could argue she was just that bangable... But if he didn't need a photo the first time through, why would John Connor risk altering history by making him an obsessed stalker the second time through?

Hell, how does he recognize her at all without the photo? I forget if that was a plot point... him knowing what she looked like. The Terminators sure didn't.

These are easily explained. The first time thru Reese could have had an entirely different photo of Sarah or maybe, like Ed says, she gets her picture taken in Mexico anyway. There's really no reason JC wouldn't have a picture of his mom.

As for Reese having sex with Sarah, why wouldn't he bang her? The women of his time have no showers and he's constantly on the run from killer robots, so an 80's Linda Hamilton and a bed ought to be pretty enticing for his character. Once the timeline alters with Reese being the dad, JC knows his dad is Kyle Reese from the future, so of course he knows he has to send him back and decides to save that picture to help him.

What I hadn't thought about before was that we see a different character playing JC in T2 vs. Terminator Salvation. That's really jsut a casting issue, but it could also be used to support an original JC vs. a revised JC with Reese DNA. I also notice looking back on the original that the war is set in 2029, but that preview I saw today said something about 2018. Maybe the war just lasts that long, but seems like another potential indication that we are dealing with different timelines.

Many people believe that Kyle Reese is John Connor's father, which would create a paradox: John must send Kyle back in time so that he can exist to defeat Skynet and send Kyle back to protect his mother in the first place. But this opens up the potential that John may have had another father, as otherwise he may not have existed in the original timeline (i.e. a timeline prior to TDE existing). This leads many fans to one of four possible options that:

1: The man that Sarah was dating in the first film, Stan Morski is the true biological father of John Connor. However, there is no evidence that Sarah and Stan were actually involved, only that they had a date (which he canceled).

2: Kyle Reese was sent back in a different time line to alter the future outcome against Skynet and John Connor was born then creating the time line in which John led humanity to victory against Skynet and sent Kyle back to to protect his mother and ensure his survival.

3: Without presuming temporal intervention as some part of the unaltered original timeline that somehow gave rise to the first "John Connor, Leader of the Resistance" before anyone went back in time. Given that Sarah was basically just out there dating, any of a dozen one-night stands or blind dates could certainly have led to a pregnancy. And the "flake" nature of the guys she was dating (or blind-dating like Morsky) can easily lead to Sarah being a single mother. So could whatever hook-up she may have made with any unnamed stranger in Club Noir as a rebound for Morsky breaking their date. Since without TDE intervention, no one was coming to the club to kill her that night. Perhaps it is this original situation that leads to Sarah abandoning the conventional lifestyle of College, Waitressing, and City life to somehow become a recluse militant survivalist on her own, placing her in a position to be John's mentor through the unaltered original timeline Judgment Day that has to have happened prior to any TDE intervention.

4: The whole entire theory of a paradox is untrue just alternate universes all together exist even without the same events happening, this comes from the fact that the Terminator 3's T-850 is from a world where John Connor went to a basement party and hooked up with his future wife. But because of the events of T2 this did not happen in the T3 world. With all the major changes to time line the Terminator would not have been able to carry out it's mission to kill John Connor in the first place especially with the unveiling that, that one Terminator was the one that killed John.

I was not paying a lot of attention to this film just because I was really excited and wanted to see it clean, without knowing the overall plot. But I have to admit, a couple weeks ago when I found out that the original version really had no John Connor in it, that it was a story about Marcus Wright, I began to have some doubts.

Finding out that John's involvement was increased because Bale demanded more, I started to really get a feeling in the back of my mind that maybe something went wrong on this film.

Now this review. Apparently Harry feels the same way about this film as I felt about Angels & Demons. I haven't bought my ticket yet for Terminator and I'm now questioning if I even want to. Maybe I'll skip the midnight showing and see it first thing Friday morning, saving myself at least a couple dollars in ticket price.

E...

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"I sell the drugs that keep you people from seeing dragons at night." - Gus "Psych"

I think the most telling points about the review are his noted frames of reference. Harry had VERY high hopes for this film because of his love AS A KID of The Terminator and T2. I think that lead to very high expectations on his part for a film franchise he's loved since he was a kid. And I think he left the theater feeling much like many of us may have following our initial exposure to The Phantom Menace or the rest of the PT. We had built up this love and lore around the OT that almost nothing could live up to the expectations we have/had of these modern explorations of fictional worlds we grew up loving.

Regardless of Harry Knowles' review I'm going to see this movie. I have to judge it for myself because I think he can't possibly be objective about what he's seen.

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"You were entrusted to lead the Republic." - Vote for Ven Zallow from THE OLD REPUBLIC in figure polls!

Undeterred by Harry's rant, I bought my ticket for the 11am showing of Terminator tomorrow. I decided that I'd skip the midnight showing, save myself a couple dollars and probably not have to sit in a crappy seat in a sold out theater.

E...

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"I sell the drugs that keep you people from seeing dragons at night." - Gus "Psych"